Review: RESIDENT EVIL

Bryan is a courier and he's late to deliver an organ for transplant to a hospital. On the way out and home he's accosted by a staffer who offers a very good payday on an emergency job. Bryan takes it. It's about to be a weird and rough night, to say the least. Welcome to the world of Resident Evil where the action is always on and lethal. I'm not going to describe the plot as it's too easily spoiled and this is one film this year that everyone who wants to be constantly engaged should see.

I'm of the demographic that should be into video games but I never caught the bug. In fact, I was such a wild larrikin back i' the day that I'd frustrate many a fellow student by refusing to play my side of whatever the game was by my opponent more than once who would angrily start playing for me. So, I neither know the game nor any of the movies made from it in the 2000s. What I knew about this film was Zac Cregger, writer and director.

I thrilled to his debut Barbarian with its constant switching and expert atmosphere. I stayed intrigued during Weapons. I didn't care about the video game origins of this one as I knew I'd be getting something that played to convention but welcomed its audience into its cleverness. Zac Cregger is clever. His comedian senses allow perfect timing of jolts and just the right amount of humour to extend tension. No jump scare or threat is without construction, however subtle, everything is earned.

This is a non-stop action movie but if you want subtext think of how every story with a rapid mutation plot is a story of reproduction. Bryan starts his journey with a flunked response to his partner's rightful demand to address their pregnancy. The phone call is interrupted by bad weather conditions which adds another point of anxiety to the already tense one of him getting through to deliver the package which probably is a life or death situation. And then you get the monsters.

Austin Abrams takes us with him on this nightmare ride and his Gen Zed exasperation endears him through every scene. He knows just about nothing but has to be ready for just about everything which stretches his responses from the kind of lifelong bystander to main character energy that (this is Zac Cregger) itself carries costs and hazards. If a video game is a voyage through puzzles and demands for alertness then that's what this is (for a comfortable ninety minutes) but it still feels a lot warmer than it needs to. As a moment of cinema this might even end up being my favourite movie this year, an nail biting actioner drawn from a console diversion. I think I like it even more for all that.

Review: IT ENDS

Four recent tertiary graduates pile into a car and set off, following directions that start diverging from expectations. When they stop to get their bearings they are attacked by a crowd of people who have come rushing out of the forest. Getting away, they try to work out what is happening. The petrol is down to a quarter tank but isn't emptying. No one is hungry. The road just keeps on keeping on. Allegory for life or just a weird tale for Gen Zed?

Alexander Ullom's debut feature plays it lean, giving us plenty of time to digest the various guesses by the friends as to what has become of them and how they might best act to end it or cope. With four clearly distinct characters who act consistently but are never types as an allegory would more typically have them. They are, however, all still young with various levels of ambition, newly hatched from the education mill that has packed them with prescribed values like school lunches. 

I was reminded of tales like YellowBrickRoad or The Blair Witch Project for the depiction of lost people whose youth and energy can lead them to both decisive action or self-binding confusion. And I was also reminded of the film of Ionesco's Rhinoceros, with its challenge to the normal world from the wilderness of alternatives. 

The young cast make a lot out of talky but still spare action and dialogue and manage to hold the screen without falling into tiresome repetition. This despite the single forward motion and the constant setting of forest on either side of a road that they must accept might be eternal. 

There is little more to say of this film without spoiling it but I will register my admiration of such a minimalist approach that yet compels questions of its outcome. I really didn't not guess the ending but wasn't surprised to know it. 

Some who see it might dispute its status as horror but I think that along with those other examples I mentioned, the lack of control in a confusing environment that threatens life and limb (a kind of gore-free Romero zombie movie) provides a constant, slow burning dread. Add a fine electronic score, in there, too.  I'd definitely call it horror. And good.